Empress Teimei

Teimei Olympia (Japanese: 貞明皇后オリンピア Teimei-kōgō-Orinpia), born Imperial Princess Sadako of Mount Alexandra, Mount Piedmont and Mount Escanor (7 June 1840 – 11 June 1970), was Empress of Olympia and Queen of St. Alberta as the first wife and political adviser of Emperor River II. She was one of the venerated founders of the Olympia Red Cross; having improved the field of nursing during war-times.

The only deceased child of her immortal generation (the middle of the 45`s); she was the only child born from the union between Kenji Futakuchi and Medea, who did not survive. As Kenji was legally the consort of Hera; she was a stepdaughter of Hera and Plato. Having been the only one of their children to have been close to Plato after his release from his imprisonment; she was a constant companion and devoutly nursed him or his disciplines or even his own worshippers whenever they fell ill. For these acts of kindness, she became venerated by Plato`s worshippers and Plato himself held her in high regard; becoming visibly dumbstruck and mentally unstable by the very news of her death. She was originally promised to River`s older sister; Vashti Olympia; upon her death, she was then chosen to be the bride of River II (Vashti`s younger brother). Her eldest surving daughter assumed the throne upon the ultimate death of the Empress Dowager, who at the time was governing over the Empire through a regency act; the very day that her daughter came into her majority is the same day that Teimei died, immediately plunging the court into a 199-day mourning period. Her close political allies have suggested that such an event was extremely common at the time - most if not all of the emperors of the Olympia Empire had died while still sitting the throne and while their heir apparent's had not reached their majority yet.

Appearance and personality
Teimei was known for her plain appearance. Her mother Medea had "soul-striking beauty" and her father Kenji Futakuchi was described as "a true belle of the gods" - even the beauty of her younger siblings and half-siblings outshone the plain appearance of Teimei. Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge had a different viewpoint of Teimei`s beauty, stating that "though she was clearly quite plain-looking; her beauty was simply in the eye of the beholder. For me, I saw true beauty, grace, and a wisdom not easily matched by anybody in the world. What drew me to her was not her plain appearance but her intelligence and wisdom". Both of her fiancées were clearly enamored with her: Vashti described her as, "a gem of a beauty; it outlasts everything in the ocean. My sweet Sadako is simply put beautiful," while River said, "though her appearance was quite plain; her eyes shone with a mysterious quality. It was like a siren sucking me in, I was instantly struck with happiness and found that she was truly somebody I can learn to love. To me, she is simply the most beautiful woman in the world." Thomas W. Knox met her at her wedding to River and was instantly struck by her plain appearance, finding it quite odd that the heir apparent to the Olympia Empire chose her; later he recounted that "though she was clearly not a beauty, there was something that drew the attention of everybody around her to look at her. To see her."

Teimei was intelligent. Both of her fiancées held highly intellectual conversations with her and enjoyed speaking to her; with both of them describing her as "well-written" and "conversely sharp". She was judged to be "cleverer [than any of her younger full-blooded siblings or half-siblings]... she is a very nice girl." When she married, she had a decent grasp of the Japanese language though she was nowhere near decent enough or confident enough to write in it, as noted by several of her biographers. However, within a few years, she mastered the language and was so proficient that her husband wrote to her in Japanese among other less-spoken languages when their letters were at danger of being confiscated by other nations. She told an American minister to Olympia that "the Japanese language is full of power and beauty, it is subtleness at it`s very core, it is essentially diplomacy only in letters. Words are carefully chosen in order to accent the quality of the words being written down; it is carefully calculated." She claimed that "for compactness of expression," Japanese rivaled "Latin, and for the making of new words and meanings is equal to the Greek."

Teimei was very sharp-eyed making her one of the most skilled sharpshooters in the Military. John Logan, a visitor to Olympia, described her as "the best sharp-eyed royal woman in Europe." He claimed that she was a "undiscovered gem of a warrior", fiercely independent and capable of standing on her own two feet. Elizabeth Worth, a daughter of Charles Fredrick Worth, a Parisian couturier, greatly admired her sharp-shooting abilities. She said, "Bring to me any woman in Europe-- queen, artiste, or bourgeoise-- who can do sharpshooting as precisely and wonderfully as Her Majesty, and I will make her one of the most popular people in the whole of Europe."

Childhood
A daughter of Queen Charlotte Medea I of Mount Escanor and Medea of Colchis, Sadako was born in Nishikichō, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan. She was named after one of her mother`s nieces; Princess Sadako of Vusairth. Sadako had several full-blooded siblings: Aeacus (b. 1510), Agdistis (1530 – 1599), Nana (b. 1584), Cybele (b. 1588), Aphrodite (b. 1589), Apollo (b. 1599), Artemis (b. 1599), Athena (b. 1657), Britomartis (b. 1669), Dionysus (b. 1699), Epaphus (b. 1777), Ersa (b. 1788), Heracles (b. 1799), Hermes (b. 1812), Lacedaemon (b. 1824), Melinoë (b. 1842), Minos (b. 1843), Pandia (b. 1845), Pandeia (b. 1847), Persephone (b. 1850), Perseus (b. 1853), Rhadamanthus (b. 1857), Zagreus (b. 1860), Graces (b. 1866), Horae (b. 1868), Litae (b. 1869), Muses (b. 1871) and Moirai (b. 1875). She had many half-siblings, chief among them Erichthonius (b. 1878). She was close to her paternal half-aunts including: Beatrix, Amalia and Christine.

When Sadako was ten years old, one of her paternal half-aunts, the widely loved and revered Empress-Queen Louise-Marie, died of tuberculosis and Sadako was left heartbroken. Her siblings were similarly left in disbelief, as their half-aunt was a full-blooded deity and thus it was physically impossible for her to have become ill from a simple mortal disease. With the death of Louise-Marie looming over their heads, there was a serious aura that filled the court during the long mourning period.

Marriage
In her youth, Sadako resembled her mother, and was noted to be a beauty, possessing delicate features. Combined with her status as the daughters of two mighty deities, she was a desirable bride. On July 27, 1857, Sadako married Archduke River Maximilian of Olympia in Brussels, the idealistic younger brother of the late heir apparent of the Olympia Imperial Throne: Vashti Olympia, the Tsesarevna of Olympia. Her wedding was a lavish affair with many important royals including River`s parents Emperor Alexander and Empress Marie Alexandrovna attending to congratulate the couple. They gave Sadako and her new husband a beautiful bisque statue of them sitting together as a wedding gift. In the Court of Olympia she was much prized by her mother-in-law, Empress Marie Alexandrovna, who saw in her the perfect example of a wife to an Olympia Archduke. This contributed to the strained relationship between Sadako and Empress-Queen Alexandra, wife of Miguel, whom Marie treated rather cruelly. Upon her marriage, she changed her name to "Teimei" ("enlightened constancy"), as is tradition for women in her position. She was then crowned at the Lyudmila Chapel in St. Augustine, Olympia.

Empress of Olympia
In the early 1860s, the ambitious Napoleon III initiated the French intervention in Olympia and it`s empire, sending the country into a flurry of chaos. Her husband was enraged, perceiving the intervention of the French on the soil of the Empire as a "trick" to send the Empire and collapse it`s political structure. Teimei was similarly wary of the presence of the French, choosing to intervene quickly in order to drive them out with little collateral damage. Carlota Vorontsova, a later sister-in-law to Maria Vorontsova (eldest daughter of Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Shkrebneva), remarked on the process as "frightening; to think that the "great" Napoleon is willing to exert such political stress on our government, that truly scares me. What will he do with the Imperial couple if he captures them, what will he do to our most beloved Empress, Teimei."